Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Before I can open my mouth, he shakes his head. “Well, what do you know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t care enough to fight with you on this,” he mutters as he pivots back around. “It’s your life. You might even be doing us both a favor if you get yourself killed.”
He strides off once more, angling away from the village, and as I bob and weave against branches coming at me, my strength returns, probably because I have something to fight against. If he’s going to block my way, he’s going to have to use sturdier stuff than this forest I’ve already cut a path through.
Some ten lengths on, the wide, bouldered river that feeds all the smaller grazing streams cuts in close to us, and Merc takes us to the very edge of the tree line so that I can feel the warmth of the sunlight. As he looks around at the bend in the flow, I measure the forest on the far shore, but no one comes here, so there’s no need, really. Water is more easily accessed elsewhere, we are a distance from the travel road, and with the dead cows?
“You better get back in the woods,” he says casually.
I step in closer to him for protection. “What have you seen?”
“Unless you want to watch.” Merc takes off his pack and then his hand goes to the dirk holstered at his hip. “In which case, you’re more than welcome to stay here.”
As he takes the weapons belt off, I frown. “What are you doing?”
“I reek of balas and need to get the stench off me and my clothes as best I can.” He removes his leather surcoat and tosses it to a rock at the shore. “Or most of the domesticated animals, and all of the wild ones, will alert to our presence.”
With that, he strips the mesh breast cover away, and goes for those ties on his britches. Flushing, I can feel his eyes on me, as if he’s daring me to stay where I am—
I shoot back for the forest so fast, my face smacks into the very leaves I’ve been defending myself from. Sputtering and shoving branches away, I dive deep into the cooler shadows, and make sure I keep my eyes focused in the opposite direction. I have to give him credit. Given the density of the forest and the way it crowds up to the river edge, this is as safe a bathing place as any—and he’s got a point about the animals.
Also, going by all the splashing behind me, I’d say he’s making quick work of his very big body …
My mind becomes inappropriately sharp as I ascribe all kinds of nudity to him—as well as what those callused hands must look like cupping the water and carrying it to his bare skin. I swear, what my imagination conjures is so vivid, it’s as if I’m watching him. I see the droplets falling off the ends of his hair, and rivulets sluicing down the pads of his chest and the hard clench of his abdominals to his—
“Stop it,” I hiss.
But … I don’t.
I can’t.
Twenty-Five
Trust Issues.
As I listen to Merc bathing, my sense of direction evaporates even though my inner orientation has always been pretty good: I become totally lost in the familiar woods I’ve been through my whole life, and that doesn’t bode well for the journey that’s awaiting me.
And then something occurs to me.
Relieved to have another focus—any other—rather than mercenary nudity, I shift the pack off my shoulders and kneel down. My hands shake as I loosen the flap that kept things so tightly sealed, but it’s just the cold, I tell myself. Yes, in spite of the sun, the air temperature is quite chilly, especially here in the woods—
“So why won’t you tell me what he really wanted?” Merc calls out from his bath.
Shoving my hand inside, I stall. “Who?”
There’s a pause in the water noise. “That dandy with the golden halo and air of superiority.”
My movements get jerkier as I fish around because all I can feel is the box. Where is the compass in its satchel? And I hate that my first thought is whether Merc has taken it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
The washing starts up again, and Merc’s voice takes on that tone of dry amusement I’m coming to know very well. “Why did you apologize to him as we left?”
Glancing in his direction, I nearly fall on my face.
He’s all the way in the center of the river, the water level at his waist, his bare chest and sculpted abdominals glistening, wet and strong, in the sunlight. Unlike so many of the Gauntlet’s clients, he is utterly hairless, nothing obscuring his musculature.
Thus the scars that mark him are obvious.
There are … too many of them. And yet the fact he’s survived that much makes him seem like a god demoted to be among those of mortal make.